Do you remember when shopping was simple, when you just went to a shop and bought something and that was the end of it?

When the only deliveries were the milkman and the grocer? The latter brought round the contents of the list you had taken into him the day before, in the baskets you had left with the list and your ration coupons. 

Our milkman also supplied fresh bread, the smell of which still reminds me of the sweet aroma of horse breath, because the milkman delivered with a horse and cart.

And not one of them ever asked us to fill in a form expressing our delight or otherwise about the goods, their packaging or their delivery. Oh happy days of distant memory.

Today we can order stuff online and get it delivered within twenty-four hours - clearly a boon and one for which we should be proportionately grateful. And I am.

But what I am not grateful for is the stream of emails and texts that follow the simplest transaction asking me to rate every element of the transaction or the ordering process. 

I confess I was diverted by their concern initially, much as I was charmed the first time I went to America by a shopkeeper’s earnest entreaty that I should have a nice day.

I remember the look of confusion verging on terror on her face when I expressed my pleasure at her warmth and friendliness and assured her that her well-being and that of her family and descendants was similarly of great concern to me.

Just as no one really wants you to answer when they say ‘How are you?’ ‘Have a nice day’ is a pleasantry, I discovered, requiring a minimal response.

I now ignore the ever increasing requests from commercial and service organisations to provide them with plaudits for their websites, celebrating their remarkable prowess in sending me coffee, marker pens, books and wine on a regular basis. 

So I would like to take this opportunity to tell them all that if I don’t complain, then you are doing an adequate job.

If you don’t send me mendacious assurances that you ‘tried to deliver today but were unable to’ I might even forgive minor lapses.

But when I have been at home all day and no delivery vehicle has been with a half mile of Baker Towers, don’t try to con me, okay?